when you weren’t mine to lose
Summary: Change is a scary thing, especially when it feels like nothing has stayed the same.
It’s been a year since Marinette became the Guardian of the Miracle Box - a year of struggling beneath a burden she never asked for, a weight that has her leaning on her partner more and more as the hours fly by, of letting him come to her, too, when he needs a soft place to land. A year of falling for the boy who takes on the world by her side with a smile made of sunlight, and fighting the growing urge to tell him what he means to her.
After all, they’ll have time enough for that when Paris is safe.
But when the unthinkable happens, Marinette learns the tragedy of loving someone quietly, and the lines she’ll cross to save him.
Thank you to @emsylcatac for looking over the first chapter for me!! 💙
[one: when I was living for the hope of it all]
The passage of time can be a funny thing.
As Ladybug touched down onto the roof of the apartment that once belonged to one Wang Fu, she thought of how, for every one thing that withstood the hours, another would inevitably change.
There were the facts of Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s life that even passing years couldn’t seem to touch: akumas, for one, rampant and undeterred in the onslaught to claim what Hawkmoth wanted but could never be allowed to have; just as there was the presence of Chat Noir only one step behind, landing in a crouch at her side with a smile made of sunbeams. The rooftops they haunted to keep Paris safe remained more or less unchanged, as did the weight that never left Ladybug’s tired shoulders, and the deepening cracks in a heart that loved too much and too many. There were designs in need of sewing and stacks of homework to get through and secrets to keep, and only so many hours in the day.
But when Ladybug looked back on the year that had passed, it felt like everything had changed. That too much had.
Over the summer, Marinette had turned sixteen. She had a red-spotted box buried in her room that carried more responsibility than she knew what to do with. She was split down the middle and slowly coming apart at the seams.
Ladybug takes a deep breath in through her nose, holding it a moment before letting it go. She’d fix it. She always did.
